While they use the same underlying smart contracts, Gnosis Safes created via the legacy Safe mobile apps are not directly compatible with the Safe web interface. Please refer to our comparison article for details.

If you nevertheless want to use your legacy mobile Gnosis Safe with the Safe web interface, this article describes how to do it.

We only suggest doing this if you are familiar with Metamask, private key-based Ethereum accounts and the way recovery phrases work.

Also, please note that this guide does not work with the Safe desktop app since it requires Metamask.

We start with your mobile Safe. Share your Safe address from your mobile device to your desktop computer, e.g. 0x191Ff61F404cc98da1cAdaE2F7F4902E196c2aD1

Wait until your Safe was successfully loaded and the loading spinner disappears. You are currently seeing “READ ONLY” above your Safe address. You might need to reload the page.

Please open Settings -> Owners. You will now see 3 owners if you don’t have a 2FA device connected. And 4 owners if you have a Status Keycard or the Safe Authenticator browser extension connected.

In this example there are only 3 owners:

Now we need the 12 words of your Safe recovery phrase. 2 owner accounts are derived from this recovery phrase. If you would like to learn more about this, please refer to BIP39 documentation, e.g. here.

In order to derive the private keys of the 2 owner accounts from your 12-word recovery phrase, please download the MyCrypto app.

Select “Mnemonic Phrase” after opening the app.

After entering your phrase, please select account number #1.

Select “Wallet Info” and copy your private key.

Now open Metamask and import this account by copy-and-pasting the private key.

The account that you have just imported is one of the owners of the Safe.

When you access the Safe web interface now, the “READ ONLY” has disappeared.

Please check the currently set threshold via Settings -> Policies.

If it says “1 out of 3” are can skip the following part and you are ready to go. You are now able to trigger transactions from the web interface. Your Metamask account needs to execute the transaction and therefore needs ETH for gas fees.

If it says “2 out of 4”, you need to do the following:

Please close MyCrypto, reopen it and repeat all steps, however, this time, make sure to open account number #2.

Import this account as well into Metamask. It is also an owner of your Safe.

Now you have 2 accounts imported into Metamask which are owners of your Safe.

You are now able to trigger transactions from the web interface. You will need to approve with both the imported Metamask accounts. One of those Metamask accounts needs to execute the transaction and therefore needs ETH for gas fees.

Please note:

At this point you can either make transactions from mobile or from the web interface.

If you change any of the Safe settings such as threshold or owners, the mobile app will stop working for you.

If you want to migrate your Safe from the legacy mobile app to the Safe web interface and stop using the legacy mobile app, please refer to our migration guide.